The Constitutional Court ("CC") Decision No. 2024/48855 dated 29 July 2025 was published in the Official Gazette dated 16 January 2026 and numbered 33139.
1. Proceedings Giving Rise to the Application:
The applicant instituted legal proceedings for the recovery of employment-related claims, alleging that while performing his employment duties at the overseas construction site of the company for which he worked between 2013 and 2015, his employment contract was unlawfully terminated by the employer without just cause.
Upon the completion of the appellate and cassation stages, the 9th Civil Chamber of the Court of Cassation held that, pursuant to Article 27 of Law No. 5718 on International Private and Procedural Law (the "Law"), the dispute should be examined by taking into consideration the employment contract entered into with the applicant. In this respect, although no written employment contract existed, it was accepted that, for the applicant whose entire period of employment was performed abroad, the law of the habitual place of work corresponded to the law of the country in which the work was actually carried out. Accordingly, the Court stated that the applicable law for the relevant period should be determined within this framework and that a conclusion should be reached by also observing the applicant's procedural vested rights.
The court of first instance, acting in compliance with the reversal decision, concluded that a choice-of-law agreement deemed existing in conjunction with the employment contract governing the relevant period and therefore held that Russian law is applicable. The court further held that, under Russian law, an action must be filed within three months following the termination of the employment contract, and, finding that the applicant had failed to comply with this period, dismissed the case on the ground that the forfeiture period had elapsed.
Upon appeal, the 9th Civil Chamber of the Court of Cassation ruled that although the outcome dismissing the case was legally justified, the three-month period prescribed under Russian law should be characterized not as a forfeiture period but as a statute of limitations.
On this basis, the Court decided to amend the reasoning of the judgment and to uphold it as amended. The applicant lodged an individual application against the said final decision on 23 August 2024.
2. Assessment of the CC
In its assessments concerning the law applicable to actions brought by employees working in a foreign country for the recovery of employment-related claims, the CC has referred to the case-law of the (abolished) 22nd Civil Chamber of the Court of Cassation and the 9th Civil Chamber of the Court of Cassation as follows:
In their earlier decisions, both the (abolished) 22nd Civil Chamber of the Court of Cassation and the 9th Civil Chamber of the Court of Cassation accepted that, as a first step, it must be examined whether the applicable law governing the employment relationship had been determined by an agreement between the employee and the employer. In the absence of such an agreement, or in circumstances where the agreement on the applicable law is invalid for any reason, it was held that the law of the place most closely connected with the employment should be applied. In determining the law most closely connected, criteria such as the nationality of the parties, the language of the contract, the method of payment of wages, the place where the contract was executed, and the domicile of the parties were taken into consideration. Furthermore, it was stated that where a Turkish national employee posted abroad, and where an organic link between the individual, the Turkish company and the foreign company abroad was duly established, Turkish law should be applied with considerations of public policy.
Following the abolition of the 22nd Civil Chamber of the Court of Cassation as of 1 October 2020 and the transfer of its duties and case-law largely to the 9th Civil Chamber of the Court of Cassation, the decisions rendered thereafter by the 9th Civil Chamber held that the country in which the employee actually performed his work during the period giving rise to the claims in dispute should be regarded as the habitual place of work.
Even in the absence of an explicit and signed agreement between the parties on the applicable law, it was accepted that a tacit choice of law had been made through the execution of the employment contract, and accordingly, jurisprudence was developed to the effect that the law of the country where the work was actually performed should apply to disputes concerning employment-related claims.
In the present case, the judicial authorities considered that, since the employment contract had been executed in Russia and duly signed by the applicant and the employer, the applicable law had thereby been chosen, and accordingly concluded that Russian law should be applied as the law of the habitual place of work. However, the CC did not find it legally reasonable to exclude from consideration the law most closely connected with the employment contract, which could potentially afford a higher level of protection to the employee, when determining the law of the habitual place of work.
According to the CC, the determination of the law most closely connected requires a combined assessment of factors such as the nationality of the parties, the language of the contract, the place where the contract was executed, and the country in which the parties' social and legal relations are predominantly concentrated. In the present case, it was noted that these factors had not been sufficiently examined, and that identifying the law most closely connected through an evaluation of such elements was of particular importance for maintaining the balance of interests between the employee and the employer. Moreover, the CC emphasized that where the choice of law results in the employee being deprived of certain rights, an interpretative approach allowing for the application of the law providing greater protection should be adopted.
Consequently, the CC concluded that limiting the assessment solely to the employment contract executed between the parties, without examining whether there existed a law more closely connected with the contract, constituted an approach that restricted the applicant's right of access to a court under Article 36 of the Constitution and imposed an excessive and disproportionate burden. On these grounds, the CC decided, by a majority of votes, to allow the application and to find a violation of rights.
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